The McStays: A lingering mystery

Fliers with color photos of the missing McStay family handed out by family on Saturday April 3, 2010, in San Ysidro. The McStay family's vehicle, a white 1996 Isuzu Trooper, was found abandoned in a San Ysidro parking lot on Feb. 8.
— Nelvin C. Cepeda / Union-Tribune

Fliers with color photos of the missing McStay family handed out by family on Saturday April 3, 2010, in San Ysidro. The McStay family's vehicle, a white 1996 Isuzu Trooper, was found abandoned in a San Ysidro parking lot on Feb. 8.
— Nelvin C. Cepeda / Union-Tribune

A week after Thanksgiving, in a field southeast of Temecula, a hunter came across the partially buried remains of a human body. A little while later, Mike McStay got a phone call.

“Did your brother ever have any broken bones?”

McStay’s heart pounded. He knew why the detective was asking.

It’s been three years since his brother’s whole family vanished — Joseph, wife Summer, and their two young sons — in a mystery that has baffled the police, the public, and armchair sleuths from coast to coast.

For the relatives, that’s three years of not knowing, the worst kind of anxiety, hope riding with fear on a never-ending roller coaster.

It’s three years of sightings and tips that go nowhere, three years of strangers gossiping and trash-talking on the Internet, three years of every possible scenario, good and bad, playing in their heads over and over.

Did the McStays decide to ditch it all — his water-fountain business, her real-estate plans, two dogs, thousands of dollars in bank accounts, the new home in Fallbrook — and start over somewhere? Was that them in the grainy surveillance video, walking hand-in-hand into Mexico?

Or, as a new book on the case suggests, were there dark undercurrents in the seemingly placid waters of their life together, undercurrents that maybe led to murder?

For the relatives, it’s also been three years of heart-grabbing moments like Mike McStay picking up the phone and hearing Sheriff’s detective Troy DuGal, the lead investigator on the case, ask about broken bones.

His brother never had any fractures, though, McStay said. The body wasn’t a match. The waiting and wondering continue, day after day, month after month, year after year.

“It’s like living with a broken heart,” McStay said. “You’re going through the motions of life, but there’s this open wound that won’t be healed until this is resolved.”

A normal day

Feb. 4, 2010 was a Thursday.

Joseph McStay, then 40, had a business meeting in Rancho Cucamonga about one of the fountains his company, Earth Inspired Products, was building. Summer, 43, was at home with Gianni, 4; Joey Jr., 3, known as Chubba; and the two dogs, Bear and Digger.

The family had moved from San Clemente to the five-bedroom, two-story house on Avocado Vista Lane about two months earlier. It’s in one of those housing tracts so familiar to Southern Californians: beige stucco, red-tile roofs, green lawns. This one, just east of Interstate 15, is called Lake Rancho Viejo. “Entering a Traffic Calmed Neighborhood,” the road signs read.

The couple, both licensed real-estate agents, bought the house out of foreclosure for about $320,000. On a video tour Joseph shot before the purchase, posted on YouTube, he talks about the hill out back and calls the neighborhood beautiful. Summer talks about being too close to a truck stop and calls the neighborhood ugly.

They started renovating the house with new countertops, appliances, paint and wood floors. The plan was to sell the home for a big profit down the road, then maybe get back to the beach. Joseph was an avid surfer.

On Feb. 4, Summer spoke on the phone with her sister, who had just had a baby, and made plans for a visit. In the afternoon, at a Ross store in Vista, Summer’s credit card was used to buy beach towels, infant pajamas and a jacket.

The home computer was used that day to search for homeopathic anger-management medication, to scan Craigslist for children’s toys, and to visit the Animal Planet website.

Throughout the day, phone calls from home went to Joseph’s cell, and calls from his cell went to one of his employees. The couple traded text messages.

At 7:47 p.m., a neighbor’s surveillance camera captured the bottom 18-inches of what appears to be the family’s white Isuzu Trooper going by. About 40 minutes later, on his cellphone, Joseph called a co-worker.

Then nothing.

No phone calls, no emails, no texts. No credit-card charges, no ATM withdrawals. No confirmed sightings.

Nothing.

Into Mexico?

Sheriff’s deputies first went to the house on Feb. 10, after a business associate of Joseph’s called to report that he wasn’t responding to phone calls or emails. The deputy knocked on the door and saw nothing amiss.

Three days later, Mike McStay came over from San Clemente, where he lives. He climbed in an unlocked window and looked around. He said he was surprised the dogs were there, but didn’t want to overreact. He thought maybe the family had left for a quick vacation during the President’s Day weekend.

Two days later, when he still hadn’t heard from them, he called the sheriff.

Detective DuGal works in homicide, which investigates missing-persons cases. At the house, he found a carton of eggs and a rotten banana on the kitchen counter, child-size bowls of popcorn in the living room near the TV, Summer’s prescription sunglasses.

To him, it looked like they’d left in a hurry. But why?

The Trooper was located in a storage yard. It had been identified as an abandoned vehicle and towed from a shopping center parking lot in San Ysidro at about 11 p.m. on Feb. 8, four days after anyone last heard from the family. Lot attendants said they believed the SUV had been there since about 6 p.m. that day.

Two child seats were buckled in place inside the Trooper. There were new toys in the back — Chubba’s birthday was Jan. 31 — and asthma medicine in a plastic container on the floor.

Volunteers from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children scoured hours of border-area surveillance tape and found a foursome that resembled the McStays, two grown-ups and two kids, walking toward the turnstile into Mexico at about 7 p.m. on Feb. 8.

Each adult was holding the hand of a child. The woman was wearing what looked like Ugg boots, a pair of which Summer owned. But the tape was grainy and dark and a positive identification impossible.

Detectives soon found other evidence suggesting the family had gone across the border voluntarily. On Jan. 27, eight days before they disappeared, someone used the family computer to email the “About.com” website about passport requirements for children traveling in Mexico. The month before that, Summer was looking into purchasing Spanish-language software.

Family members weren’t convinced. Why would Joseph abandon his teenage son from an earlier marriage, Jonah, who lived with his mom in North County? Why was Summer looking at “Evite.com” on Feb. 3 for children’s birthday party invitations if she was going away the next day?

And who leaves a budding nest egg house, pets, two vehicles, $100,000 in bank accounts — a life — without saying why and without saying goodbye?

‘Citizen sleuths’

Witness protection would be one answer, but law enforcement says no.

Detectives developed another theory: the family went into Mexico on purpose, and something bad happened. That would explain why there’s been no sign of them. What it doesn’t explain is the four-day gap between their disappearance and the video of four people crossing into Mexico.

“We have not discovered any evidence leading us to believe a crime has occurred thus far,” said Lt. Glenn Giannantonio. “There has been no evidence to show us that the disappearance is anything other than a family being missing of their own free will.”

He said leads have tapered off, but the investigation remains open. “A lot of time and effort was put into this case, more than any other missing-person case I am aware of,” he said. “We have no idea where they are.”

In the absence of officials answers, the case has its own life on the Internet.

Mike McStay runs a site, mcstayfamily.org, where there are photos and videos of the family and occasional updates about sightings — Montana, Indiana, Baja — and other developments. There is a Facebook page, where the family’s supporters post messages of encouragement.

And there are sites like Websleuths and Justice Quest, where amateur detectives explore every nuance of the case. Joseph’s dizzy spells. Summer’s aliases. Chubba’s birthmark. Their fascination seems endless, their numbers swelling every time Nancy Grace or Geraldo Rivera or Laura Ling explores the case on TV.

Among those drawn to the story is Rick Baker, a former radio-show host and author who was living in Fallbrook around the time the family disappeared. He overheard people talking about it in a coffee shop and got hooked.

He spent hundreds of hours looking into the case — at one point driving from the McStay house to the Ross store in Vista to see how long it took — and is offering a $25,000 reward for locating the missing family.

Baker, who now lives in North Carolina, has also written a book, “No Goodbyes,” which comes out Monday and is full of sinister implications. Much of it is based on private emails and other records that Baker said he obtained from “citizen sleuths” — documents that throw dirt all over the idea that the McStays were a happy family who simply walked off into a Mexican sunset.

The book is hardest on Summer, casting her as hotheaded, manipulative and vindictive. In an interview, Baker said he thinks Summer “did something or had something done” to her husband, although he admitted he has no proof.

Summer’s sister, Tracy Russell, said she’s heard about the book but doesn’t plan to read it. “We’ve suffered enough, and this just makes it harder,” she said. “So many horrible things are being said, and they’ve made my sister into this horrible person. Everybody has character flaws, but to attack her that way, when she isn’t here to defend herself, is so hurtful.”

The book also points fingers at Mike McStay and others over the handling of his brother’s business affairs and personal property after the disappearance. “Did Mike,” the book asks, “know Joseph wasn’t coming back?”

McStay said, “Our family hasn’t taken any of that money, not one dime.” He said funds were used to complete fountain projects already under way and to make child-support payments for Joseph’s teenage son.

Giannantonio, the sheriff’s lieutenant, said, “We have reviewed financial records and have found nothing that would lead us to believe a crime has occurred.”

Asked about the book, McStay sighed. “For everyone else, this is just a story to them,” he said. “For us, this is real life. You try to take the high road and turn the other cheek. Unfortunately, a case like this brings out the bottom dwellers, people trying to line their pockets on the misery of others.”

Baker said any profits he makes from the book — at one point last week pre-orders made it Number 7 on Amazon’s “true crime” best-sellers list — will be donated to a search-and-rescue organization in Texas.

Hopes and fears

Everybody waits.

“It’s three years later, and we have the same hopes and fears,” Russell said. “There’s not a day that goes by that we don’t wonder, worry and try to figure it out.”

Joseph’s mother still sends him emails, catching him up on things, just in case.

Summer’s mom frets whenever the weather turns cold, worried that the family, out there somewhere, might not have enough clothing or shelter to stay warm.

On Avocado Vista Lane, a new family lives in the McStays’ house, which went into foreclosure after they vanished. Neighbor Chris Southard said memories of the disappearance linger.

“We are a close neighborhood. They were new. By the time we knew them a little bit, the news vans were here,” Southard said. The prevailing theory on the street is that “something awful happened. They are never coming back.”

The same hopes. The same fears. The same mystery.

Family members have been encouraged to write their own books. Mike McStay is planning to. “What the heck,” he said, “everybody else is.”

Russell isn’t interested. “I just don’t think it’s going to bring my family home,” she said. “Who are we to sing their song, when we don’t even know what happened to their voices?”